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March 28, 2024, 07:45:11 PM

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BrassEYE Special: TWAT

Started by weekender, July 10, 2005, 08:26:43 PM

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weekender

Two things before I start:

1) The events in London were tragic and my sympathy goes out to those affected.
2) I know this has been mooted before.

However, I was watching the news earlier, and it suddenly occurred to me that a BrassEYE special on 'The War on Terror', if done well, could be a fucking fantastic thing which shakes comedy to the rafters and makes Nathan Barley almost forgivable.  Alright, maybe not forgivable, but it would certainly restore some faith in Morris.

Anyway, the specific thing that made me think of it was the use of graphics on BBC Television describing Birmingham city centre in map form, which was accompanied by something like:

"Police carried out a controlled explosion on a suspect package outside the Travelodge hotel"

*Arrow points to the area*

My reaction was that this should have been followed up with:

"The suspect package was later found to be a tramp" or something, followed by a cartoon representation of a tramp drinking Special Brew, looking at the brown package next to him, taking another swig and then being blown up, all with comedy graphics.  A five-second vignette maybe, but one which would make me laugh if done well.

I'm sure it would be easy to get celebrities to denounce such acts of terrorism in an amusing way as well.  I'm picturing Andrew Marr standing outside a pub somewhere saying off-camera:

"...could be the Welsh, they hate us as well"

before turning to the camera and making a completely random report which makes no sense.

You could involve many of today's current trends as well:

"This child was involved in a happy-slapping incident where he was raping a schoolgirl.  When he was watching the footage back on his mobile phone, he noticed an Asian man in the background placing a package outside a pub, and was able to alert police, who were able to confirm that the package was a bomb and blow up the pub just in case.  It was thanks to his quick observational skills that only thirteen people in the pub died."

Chris Morris could be outside New Scotland Yard leaving a big package which says "News Bomb" before running away manically down the street.  This could easily be done if you get the authorities' permission beforehand, and would be amusing to watch I feel.

I'm sure there's many more ideas like this which could turn BES: TWAT into something amazing.  Please feel free to add more ideas here, or tell me I'm a cunt for even considering such a thing, I don't mind which.  Please also tell me if my ideas are shit and unfunny and I should edit this post accordingly.  I won't, but it's your right to tell me to do so if you want.

Bert Thung

That smokehammer site doesn't fill me with hope.

weekender

Well, no, but let's assume for a second that involved in this production are a group of people who will turn round and say "That's shit and unfunny Chris, try again"  BEFORE the show goes to air.

Gypsum Fantastic

The subtle variations of American English and British English should be pointed out as well - the Americans are fighting The War On Terror (TWOT), while we're fighting The War Against Terror (TWAT)... Or, you know, some other joke that's actually funny.

wherearethespoons

Quote from: "weekender"Please feel free to add more ideas here, or tell me I'm a cunt for even considering such a thing, I don't mind which.  Please also tell me if my ideas are shit and unfunny and I should edit this post accordingly.  I won't, but it's your right to tell me to do so if you want.

You know what? I think someone at least should make something about the way the media has reported events like this. It really is nasty, pathetic and very fucking sensationalist. I can no longer sit and watch TV news it has become so bad and after what happened in London I've decided to stop reading ALL newspapers. The reason being most of the papers I liked to read did a report on how the bombings affected the bloody stock markets. I mean for god sake. Bastards the lot of them.

Anyway, to try and drag this post back to the point slightly I will have to end it.

Godzilla Bankrolls

The thing is, he's pretty much done it all with the original series. Weekender's suggestion about happyslapping above, for example - he's done it before.

Pepotamo1985

Quote from: "Beloved Aunt"happyslapping - he's done it before.

How so?

Pinball

I think this would make a superb BES. I always enjoyed the CM news satires more than anything else. We are daily being presented with "worst disaster in the history of the planet" bullshit, when patently it isn't. In the case of the 7/7/05 London attack, approx. 50-100 people died. If that's the best Al Q'aeda can do, then they're pretty ball-less. We've managed 150,000 fatalities in Iraq without even targeting civilians (allegedly)!

So the media hysteria is a tad over-played, and very analogous to the paedophilia bollocks. Also, we're the bully-boy bad guys now, which is rather sad in the context of the wonderful 60th anniversary of the end of WW2 currently being celebrated (I'm not being sarcastic - it is fucking wonderful). So, plenty of material to satirise, at a time when satire is virtually dead.

I just wonder if CM is up to it now. He's gone in for arty, fashionable "I'm still young & trendy" shit recently (NB was embarrassingly bad), and I'm beginning to wonder if that's his true nature, rather than the sharp as nails Paxman persona we love...

Armando seems to be a far more consistently talented person IMO, and the real satirist of the two.

23 Daves

I don't know really - I think a lot of the humour around this kind of news reporting was covered quite adequately in the Day Today's "WAR" episode.  It's hard to know what he could do on top of that.  

To be honest, I actually think that George Bush and the War On Terror is almost beyond parody.

Emergency Lalla Ward Ten

The problem is that it's all been done. Both by Morris himself and by people who do second-rate dross in his image. What made On the Hour, The Day Today and Brass Eye extraordinary is that, when those shows came along, they were not only original in the 'What the fuck's this?' sense, but they were actually necessary: they were real screams of 'Aaagh, get this shit off my radio/TV!'. You can argue that they 'failed' because the news has become even more TDT-esque since the series went out, but we all enjoyed the cathartic ride at the time.

What could you actually say in a War On Terror special? The fact that the media are ghoulish and insensitive? We know that - it was all covered in the Big Street Station sketch in the first episode of On the Hour. 14 years ago.

I think if anyone wants to take on TWAT as a subject, I'd rather they took a different stance entirely, and either attacked the subject itself (as opposed to the way the media behaves), or - if they are going to attack the media - at least look for entirely new areas of derision, preferably ones that make the Morris-fans uncomfortable as well as the Daily Mail brigade.

I think the media is deserving of hatred, yes, but I think that's just it: it has to be done with real hatred. It'd take such a skilled bunch of comedians to do the equivalent of what Morris and co did in the 90s. I don't see the point in a show which just sniggers at vague media hypocrisies or laughs at reporters using mixed metaphors or whatever - it'd only be an ersatz version of what was once a worthy target.

Morris (or anyone) genuinely attacking Bush, with real bile in their eyes, though, rather than just going 'yuk yuk, he gets his words wrong' - I'd love to see that.

Blumf

I think what really needs hitting today is the public, us, everybody.

We need a 'Morris' to point at us and give us a right bollocking. Point out that we are directly responsible for the Iraq war, global poverty, pollution, sweat shops, etc. etc. Show that instead of actually taking matters into our own hands we just sit on our hands tutting a politicians and cooing over pointless events (Live8 could do with a good kicking for starters).

No knowing winks, no celeb chumminess, no post-modern irony, just pure bile directed at the public for being wrong and oblivious to the mess we're creating.

Somehow though, I doubt it'd a) get commissioned, and b) be popular.

13 schoolyards

You'd have to think a brasseye TWAT special would need to be aimed at the actual War On / Against Terror rather than the media's coverage of it.  As everyone's pointed out, the media satire angle's been covered very well by earlier stuff, and the current coverage is basically the same only more so (and doing a pretty good job of sending itself up - 'Spirit of the Blitz' anyone?).  But a comedy show that pointed out how wrong-headed much of the current anti-terrorism approach is - considering how many CCTV cameras there are in central London and the bombings still happened there, perhaps increasingly intrusive monitoring of the population isn't the way to go - might have some value to it.  

That said, Morris probably isn't the one to do it.  His intrest in this kind of thing seems to have largely been about media excesses, and it's all been done.  Which, to his credit, he seems to have realised if you think Barley was an attempt to take his interest in the media into a new direction (and I do). What we really need is someone new who's at the level of Morris (at the hight of his powers) who can put a new spin on the spin.  Someone media savvy, but who uses their knowledge to take the system apart rather than work the system to get their sub-standard junk in all the papers. Good luck finding that someone...

slim

I don't really understand this - the feeling I get from this thread is that because Morris has satirised the media there's no point going down that particular road again. Isn't shutting off a whole potential avenue of comedy like that a bit narrow minded?

What if someone far funnier than Morris appeared and did it better?

Shoulders?-Stomach!

I'm 100% with weekender on this one.  The idea can be developed much deeper than his war-satire on The Day Today, and with the news reporting as it is currently- he'd be right on the money. It also seems like something he actually cares about, if you look at (not good examples in terms of quality) BushWhacked at least it shows that he has an interest in this area, and I'm sure above all else he was staring goggle-eyed on Thursday as the news finally plummeted into the abyss of no-return.

Maybe's he's dead, which would make this programme difficult to film.

smoker

he did  a very good 4 page spread in the guardian right after september 11th, so i guess morris did feel back then that he still had work to do, and the last few years have certainly provided plenty of targets

Emergency Lalla Ward Ten

Quote from: "slim"I don't really understand this - the feeling I get from this thread is that because Morris has satirised the media there's no point going down that particular road again. Isn't shutting off a whole potential avenue of comedy like that a bit narrow minded?

That's why I say it'd need to be completely original. A War on Terror satire done in the same style as Brass Eye (and making broadly the same points) would be really pointless.

Emergency Lalla Ward Ten

Remember that quote from Iannucci: 'I was so angry about Iraq I couldn't make jokes about it'. It's a shame he thinks that way - surely the angrier you are, the better the jokes are going to be?

13 schoolyards

There's clearly more room to be explored here - but are we asking for a show about the War Against Terror, or a show about the media's role in said war?  Part of what made Brasseye work (for me) was that it was pointing out the way the media was going way, way over the top in covering issues that didn't deserve it.  TWAT might be being covered badly, but it'd be difficult to argue convincingly that the media are going over the top when out in the real world things are being blown up and people are being killed.  Wallowing in horror and gore the media might be, but they're also (largely) ignoring the huge death toll in Iraq.  To be more than just a more brutal Dead Ringers a media send-up would have to go beyond the old 'white deaths mean more than brown deaths / racially adjusted figures' jokes to look at what's really going on - and still be really, really funny while doing it.  And have to do it for every single aspect of TWAT in new and original ways.  And not simply be a bigger version of OTH's War episode (in the same way that the BES was just a bigger but perhaps-not-better version of the 'Sex' episode of brasseye)

I still think if anyone could do it, it'd be Morris - I just don't think anyone currently can do it.  Much as I admire much of Michael Moore's work, I've never found it anywhere near as funny as brasseye, and most of the anti-war comedians I've encountered seem to be a lot better at preaching than they are at being funny.  I'm sure that eventually someone will come along and do it right, and I'd really like it to be Morris.  I'm just not holding my breath.

Slackboy

I think it's about time that highlighting similarities between the actual news and OTH, TDT and BE (and more recently The Thick of It but that's more about print jounalism and the governments reaction to it, so is really not that relevant here) stopped being the kind of thing that journos joke about behind the scenes (because you just know that they are, although probably in a much more resigned and depressed way than they used to) and was implemented as part of the BBC's introductory training to new journalists. They should make it policy to be told "for god's sake don't come across like this in your reports!". I've no hope of such a thing happening with ITV and Sky, since they are just there to get advertising revenue, but the BBC should be better than that given the way that it is funded directly by us. "Sucking the terror out of terrorism" (regarding Londoner's stoical 'defiance' of the terrorists) is exactly the kind of phrase that I never want to hear again on the Beeb.

Big Jack McBastard

Quote from: "weekender"

Chris Morris could be outside New Scotland Yard leaving a big package which says "News Bomb" before running away manically down the street.  This could easily be done if you get the authorities' permission beforehand, and would be amusing to watch I feel.

Hehe I can picture this in my mind so well you deserve a biscuit!

Good idea weekender, it's been touched on but never throughly done by Morris and co, though I can imagine the thread that would develop soon after it was made banging on about Morris stealing / re-using his old themes and such.


slim

Well, aren't you just the funniest person ever to walk the earth?

Dimwit.


Well, I laughed.



Edit: Oh, I thought this person only communicated using ebaumsworld images, it's less funny now that I've looked at his/her other two posts.


pimpjuice

ya try to make people have a giggle,,,,  and you guys still throw yer toys out yer prams,, :),, go drink yer mothersbreast milk b4 ya all start crying

slim

Cripple jokes are most certainly not a worthwhile contribution to an otherwise interesting thread. You have the wit and literacy of a schoolboy. Go away.

TJ

Cor, someone *really* understands what Chris Morris is on about...

dot

surely you don't mean weekender

TJ

No, I mean yo homie pimpjuice.